I added a password to my photo gallery, just for privacy’s sake. Login is ‘family’ and you can send me an email for the password.
Category Archives: All
Christmas in March
This post is especially for my mom, who re-sent our Christmas gifts that somehow didn’t make it across the pond last time (we weren’t at the Amsterdam house and there may have been a customs issue or something…)
Anyhow, thanks a lot mom, we’re both enjoying our gifts, and my feet are warm and fuzzy in their new socks 
Click for some unwrapping photos:
Playing with words
I copied all of the text from an earlier paper I wrote (which is now evolving into a thesis) into Wordle to generate a “word cloud”. It turned out pretty neat, actually.
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Could be fun to run this against future interview transcriptions to see what pops up.
Take a tour around Amsterdam
Google just released Street View for Amsterdam, meaning that you can virtually walk/drive around the city and have full 360˚ panoramas at Google Maps, just like you can in most major U.S. cities.
Back in August I caught these “Streetview Cars” driving around my neighborhood, and I actually posed with my absentee ballot. Alas, they haven’t yet published/uploaded pictures of my street, so I don’t yet know if my voting-from-abroad moment was captured or not.
Regardless, here’s a few links to some panoramas of my everyday experience:
- My school at the Oudezijds Achterburgwal
- View of/from a cafe which I’m sometimes at after classes.
- View of/from a favorite cafe – I was just here the other day (with Susan, who’s visiting)
- My Neighborhood – or as close as I can get to my house at the moment
- Elandsgracht – part of my daily commute to school or to downtown
- AHF – where I used to be at all the time, but haven’t stopped by in a while
- Kinkerstraat – always on this street, “Gary’s Deli” is also where Hiske and I spend time studying.
Maybe I’ll find some more later
Changes
Things are a bit in flux at the moment. I’m rearraging stuff so bear with me, but I promise to maintain my journal again soon.
Posted in All, Main, Study Abroad
A night at The Movies
So last night we decided that we’d go check out the local movie theater, called The Movies. We’ve heard that the Dutch moviegoing experiance isn’t wonderful, with comments like “it’s expensive”, “there’s talking during the movies”, “getting a seat means you have to push and shove”, etc.
We figured it’d be exactly like seeing a movie in Union City
I’m pleased to say it wasn’t nearly as bad as we were told. We originally wanted to see Babel, but since the movie has multiple languages in it we were told it would be tricky to watch (the subtitles would be in Dutch, not English). We decided on Al Gore’s An Inconveinient Truth instead.
Tickets were €16 (about $20), so they’re similar to prices at home. We already looked like tourists because of the whole subtitles-thing, so I asked “Do you guys sell popcorn here?”. I got a funny look and an “umm, no”. We rushed to the movie, which was great, and it didn’t involve any rude behavior. Horray.
After the movie, we noticed that Dutch movie-going is a much different experience than that in America.
Everything here is compact and old, so the theaters, lobby, and hallways were small and had some history to them. Instead of a kiosk selling expensive soda and popcorn, the cramped lobby had a full bar with sofas, chairs, and tables. You can get relatively inexpensive beer, spirits, snacks, or even food, and are encouraged to take your beer bottle or martini glass with you into the theater. The cinema also shows classic films (like Taxi Driver) after midnight on some nights.
It seemed like most customers showed up early for their show and had a drink to warm up from the cold, saw the movie, and then spent some time socializing and talking about the film. There were absolutely zero children, not even a group of rowdy teenagers, so prominent at U.S. theaters. I wish I could take pictures because the atmosphere is totally different than the cold, modern megaplexes back home.
I do miss the popcorn though :/
Posted in All, Journal, Main, Study Abroad